Telephone toll call fraud has become a prevalent problem for many telephone service companies and their subscribers in many telephone markets, including the United States and Canada. Call fraud arises when a thief uses a telephone subscriber's telephone line without authorization to place outgoing telephone calls or accept incoming collect calls such that the subscriber, and not the thief, incurs the costs charged by the telephone network operator.
A thief may perpetrate telephone fraud by connecting a telecommunication device to an unsuspecting telephone service subscriber's line at a location outside the subscriber's premises. A thief may simply plug a telephone into an outside telephone jack such as may be found by a backyard patio or may go to the extreme step of physically tapping into a telephone company's electrical junction box usually mounted on the outside of a subscriber's home or office. When the subscriber is away from his or her home or office, thieves may utilize the subscriber's telephone line without authorization with all charges being billed to the subscriber. The telephone line may be improperly used for many applications, such as making long-distance telephone calls, sending facsimile machine transmissions or computer communications or accepting incoming telephone calls from a thiefs accomplice who reverses the telephone charges such that they are billed to the subscriber.
Exacerbating this problem is the fact that telephone lines and junction boxes are generally not well secured—indeed, many junction boxes are not even locked such that tampering is often easy. Additionally, many thieves will utilize the seized line at night and other hours, when the subscriber is not likely to attempt to use the telephone line thereby minimizing the likelihood of being discovered. Unauthorized use of a telephone line can often continue to go undetected until the subscriber receives his or her telephone bill at the end of the billing cycle. Unless long distance charges appear itemized on the telephone bill the subscriber may still not detect the call fraud.
Telephone fraud results in great inconvenience to the subscriber, and significant monetary loss to the telephone company. The subscriber must go through the trouble of contacting the telephone company, perhaps filing a report, and then sorting through the often lengthy list of telephone calls to determine which calls are fraudulent or otherwise attempt to establish that bulk billed time is not all attributable to calls placed by the subscriber. Meanwhile, as the telephone company is unable to directly recover the cost of fraudulent telephone calls, which typically involve expensive long distance or international service, all subscriber's typically pay for such losses through increased telephone tariff rates approved by local regulatory agencies.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an apparatus and method for the detection and prevention of unauthorized telephone calls.
It is also an object of this invention to provide prompt notification to the telephone company when a line is being used without authorization in order to minimize the cost of unauthorized use of a telephone line.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide for the apprehension of those engaging in call fraud, and to assist the subscriber in determining which calls were placed without authorization by logging the time, date, and/or dialed number for each unauthorized call.
These and other objects of the present invention shall become apparent in light of the present specification and drawings